Carl Icahn

By Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg/Getty Images.

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When Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump floated Carl Icahn as a potential Treasury secretary, the activist shareholder and business magnate quickly shot that idea down. “I’m not ever going to be secretary of anything in Washington,” he said at The New York Times Dealbook Conference, but minutes later, Icahn said that he would still support the controversial nominee, because he believed Trump could “shake up Washington . . . you need somebody like a Trump that can face up to Congress and get something done.”

It’s no surprise that the ruthless corporate raider would be attracted to Trump. After all, Icahn built his fortune (now a slightly diminished $17 billion, according to Forbes) by taking over companies by any means necessary. His favorite tactic, shareholder activism, leverages his partial ownership of a company—either directly or via a proxy—to criticize its management, break it apart, and subsequently restructure it according to his whims, similar to how, say, Trump might deal with a recalcitrant Congress. It’s also helped him build a successful conglomerate with diversified holdings in home decor, transportation, and energy.

But Icahn’s influence, much like Trump’s, also hinges on how much noise he can make, particularly when it comes to criticizing a company’s management. “For too long and for a variety of reasons, shareholders have been complicit in allowing management excesses and incompetence by not taking a stand,” Icahn has written. He loves taking that message as fast and far as he can, boasting several social-media profiles, including his own Tumblr account. The Wall Street Journal has noted that a single tweet from Icahn could “sometimes drive up stock prices.”